The present invention relates to wireless communications and more particularly to systems and methods for evaluating network quality.
Wireless communication networks, for example wireless communication networks providing network access in a building or on a campus, are highly complex systems that serve a multitude of client devices using multiple access points. The network planner seeks to provide ubiquitous coverage, high throughput, and relatively even loading on the access points. There are many network parameters that may be adjusted in seeking to achieve this ideal. These parameters include placement of the access points, frequencies of operations of the access points, transmitter power levels, modulation rates, etc. Algorithms have been developed that seek to optimize these parameters to achieve the best network service possible.
To determine whether a particular combination of parameter values is optimal in any sense or better than some other combination of parameters, it is necessary to devise a metric for assessing network quality. In the course of performing either a manual or automatically operated optimization algorithm, such a metric will have to be evaluated numerous times. A requirement thus emerges for a network quality metric that requires only information that is relatively easy to assemble and input and can be evaluated relatively quickly for a given set of network parameters values, but yet provides a realistic estimate of likely performance of the network that corresponds to the user experience.
Previous network planning tools and their associated metrics have been developed in the context of cellular telephone systems. By contrast, the wireless local area network (LAN) applications have different characteristics that change the nature of the network evaluation problem. As compared to LANs, cellular networks are outdoors, operate over longer ranges, typically operate at lower carrier to interference ratios, and use very different methods of media access control. The quality metrics developed in the cellular telephone context are not applicable to wireless LANs.
What is needed are new systems and methods for evaluating the quality of wireless networks including wireless LANs.